My Canadian beach holiday

I spent the whole of May on the shores of Lake Erie, in Ontario, Canada

I was helping Bird Studies Canada with their Migration Monitoring Program at Long Point Bird Observatory

We caught some pretty nice stuff. Here's a male Prothonotary Warbler

Male Blackburnian Warbler

Male Cape May Warbler

Male Ruby-throated Hummingbird (didn't band them, but just handling them was AMAZING!)

Male Magnolia Warbler

Red-eyed Vireo

Male Eastern Bluebird

White-eyed Vireo

Yellow-breasted Chat

Brown Thrasher

Male Common Grackle

It wasn't just birds. These are Coyote tracks not far from our cabin

Gulls at the Tip of Long Point

Early mornings take their toll after a month, but they were worth it

We watched some spectacular weather passing us by, in the middle of the lake

Some of the facilities were a bit basic...

Here's my stuff drying on the line

A fantastic gourmet meal starring freshly-picked wild asparagus, the best I've ever tasted

Dawn at the Tip

My last evening was beautifully calm and I didn't want to leave :o(

Eventually they dragged me off in a boat and I was sent back to Blighty

To see a whole load of photos, have a look on Flickr.

photos taken with Apple iPhone

Love the toad and save the frogs

It's Save the Frogs Day today. To celebrate, here's a toad I found in my garden the other week, and you can listen to John Shuttleworth's Love The Toad right here!

Long-distance Clara

Here's a bird with a little story to tell. This morning I caught a Whitethroat already wearing a ring (a 'control'). The number looked kind of familiar to me so I asked a few other local ringers if it was 'theirs'. It turned out to have been ringed near Tempsford in Bedfordshire, as a chick in the nest, back in June 2010!

When this information is crunched by the BTO, it'll say that the distance travelled between its nest and my place is only about 6km over slightly less than three years.

But in reality, it'll have made the journey from Bedfordshire to sub-Saharan Africa once in autumn 2010, then back the other way in spring 2011 and back again, probably the same in 2012 and has made it back again in 2013. So that's six journeys so far. Each time, it has to fatten up before leaving the UK, make its way through western Europe and through north Africa. For argument's sake, let's say it spends winter in the sahel in Senegal.

If it flew in a straight line directly there (which of course it won't have), that would be a journey of more than 2,700 miles each time. Multiplied by six, that's 16,200 miles! 26,000km!

The oldest known ringed Whitethroat was nearly seven years old, so this one has a way to go to beat that...

Pasque flowers

Let the moth trapping commence

Finally got round to running my moth trap for the first time this spring. Not a bad haul, of 85+ moths of about 16 species. The highlight was this Dotted Chestnut, a new moth for me and one that's described as "extremely rare, extremely local resident" in Bedfordshire, though there have been three other records in the county already this year.

Full list follows...

Another day, another Jay

Now seems to be a good time to catch Jays. I've had three so far this year, surpassing last year's total for the whole county!

North meets south

Some people reckon spring is at least three weeks late this year, and there are certainly some interesting combinations of birds around as spring migrants are slow to arrive, and winter visitors not keen to move back north.

This morning, the first bird out of my net was a female Brambling (below) - a garden ringing tick. And the second was a Chiffchaff control - that's when a bird has already been ringed by someone else! So it'll be interesting to see where it's been previously.

Surely not a Wood Warbler...?

I had a bit of a surprise when I stepped outside this morning. Half-asleep, I heard a trill that sounded suspiciously like a Wood Warbler. 

Telling myself it was probably something else that I'd mis-heard, I decided I'd better go and check. It sang again - definitely a Wood Warbler! This wouldn't be particularly noteworthy if I was in mid-Wales, for example, but in Bedfordshire it came as a bit of a shock...

After a bit of searching, I finally clapped eyes on the warbler and later in the day managed a few photos. Wood Warblers don't tend to stop on migration - they prefer to just carry on - but it seemed that it was among quite large numbers of warblers which had stopped off that day.

Pussy willow

Common Toads

I was driving home from the shops in the dark on a wet Friday night when I first noticed the toads. Fortunately, I managed to avoid running them over and watched as they crawled their way towards my pond. Later, I found this amorous couple, plus hanger-on, scrambling through the grass in the morning.
Not bad photos from the phone, with lighting from my head-torch in this case.

Jaydward strikes again

Looks pretty, sounds horrible.

Up close and personal with garden birds

With the tree seed (alder, birch etc) finally running out, Siskins are flooding into gardens. This male was a 'control' - a bird already ringed somewhere else when we caught it

Here's a female Siskin - less colourful but still beautiful. See how fine the bill is for getting those seeds

Another male, the first I caught in my garden

Here's another tree seed-munching finch, a Lesser Redpoll

and a female Goldfinch

Here's a Nuthatch, the third I've caught in the garden

I 'retrapped' her 15 days later. Here's a close-up of the claws that mean Nuthatches can climb down trees headfirst

I originally caught this Treecreeper on New Year's Day 2012, so it was good to see it's still going strong

A Goldcrest, Europe's smallest bird, weighs about 5g (the same as 5 paperclips)

And a male Great Spotted Woodpecker

Read more about bird ringing in the UK on the BTO website

Early morning

photo taken with iPhone 4S

Hazel catkins

photo taken with iPhone 4S

Reeds at Woodwalton Fen

photo taken with iPhone 4S